Heathrow warns that quarantine will ‘strangle economy’

HEATHROW bosses today declared quarantines that have grounded 60% of its routes are “strangling the economy” and repeated calls on the Government to open up testing at airports for Covid-19.

July’s traffic through Britain’s biggest airport was down 88% on the previous year. More than half of the passengers who did fly out of the airport — over 480,000 — went to European summer holiday destinations.

Heathrow chief executive John Holland-Kaye said: “Tens of thousands of jobs are being lost because Britain remains cut off from critical markets such as the US, Canada and Singapore. The Government can save jobs by introducing testing to cut quarantine from higher-risk countries.”

He wants a so-called “double test”, as passengers arrive and then five or eight days into quarantine.